Estate Agent problems

Aroundincircles

I have recently sold 2 houses through a local estate agent and have issues with both deals. I wonder whether anyone could advise?....

House 1 (our family home) was on the Market for 2 years during which we had several issues with the agency. The house was empty as we had already moved out so the agency held the keys. On at least 2 occasions the external doors were left unlocked and on one occasion actually open (for a few days) following a viewing. They failed to alert us to problems in the house due to it being empty for a while - eg doors not opening etc. The final and most disturbing problem came a week after exchange but a week before completion when we discovered that the buyers decorators were in & painting the rooms.

House 2 was a new build and sold to a couple introduced to us via the same agency pre marketing. We never instructed the house to be marketed, hence held no contract but paid 1.5% via our solicitor direct at the point of sale.

I have written to the agency complaining about the level of service on House 1 & the inflated cost (I feel) for an introduction on House 2. They have apologised but refuse to compensate, claiming it was all a misunderstanding & I now have a solicitors letter demanding I settle the bill on house 1 in full.

My questions are:

1. Is it reasonable to have to pay the bill on house 1 in full given that they allowed unaccompanied access to my home, albeit empty?

2. Is there anyway I can persue some return on the payment I have made for services on house 2 or having already paid it is it too late?

Any advice would be appreciated.

ACG

1. This is negotiation. At the end of the day it seems no harm was done - even if it could have been. So in i can see both sides to this...

2. How would your solicitor have known to pay the estate agents any money if there was no contract in place?
You may be able to sue the estate agents for the money, the solicitors if you can not obtain the money from the agents and possibly also the solicitors for compensation for making a mistake. But i imagine there must be some contract somewhere for the solicitors to have sent the money without asking.

Aroundincircles

Thanks ACG for your comments.

I take your view with 1. but disagree. The fact that the house was empty shouldnt mean thatnthe EA can do as they please without permission. Using your logic, would it have been ok for the family to move in before completion while we continued to pay the mortgage? No harm done after all.

With regard to 2. The contract was sent out to us after the sale was agreed & remains unsigned by the agency and us. We are not looking to pay them nothing & knew that they were the agent being used by the buyers. We just expected to pay a lower fee as no marketing was instructed or carried out.

HelenRachel

If the agents were so bad first time round why did you use them again? I'm confused? How else would they know property no.2 was for sale?

googler

Aroundincircles wrote: »

With regard to 2. The contract was sent out to us after the sale was agreed & remains unsigned by the agency and us. We are not looking to pay them nothing & knew that they were the agent being used by the buyers. We just expected to pay a lower fee as no marketing was instructed or carried out.

On that basis, you could argue that you should pay them a higher fee the longer a property remains on the market (because they them do more marketing work), but that wouldn't either work or be popular with the public.

They've saved you the hassle of having to keep the house tidy for viewings, of tidying it up for photos, and they've essentially secured the ideal quick sale for you. Why isn't this worth their full fee, or even a bonus?

If you hadn't instructed the agent, why did you accept them sending you a viewer/buyer, and why did you accept that buyer's offer, etc etc through to a confirmed sale? Why didn't you reject the viewing on the basis that you had no contract? By accepting the viewer through the agent, some here would say you've agreed a verbal contract with them, at least. And you knew their terms of business from selling house 1 with them, didn't you?

Can we assume that you told the EA that you wanted to sell house 2 with them, and that's why they sent the viewer round?

Aroundincircles

House 1 was on the market whilst we were building house 2. In fact both house sales were agreed within a fortnight of each other. The agent selling house 1 knew that we were building a new house and had been to value it (along with 2 other agencies) but we hadnt instructed any of them or negotiated terms as we werent really ready to sell - it was still being built. Thats why the same agent is involved in both.

We didn't need to keep house 2 tidy - it was only half built!

We had

dimbo61

You instructed the local estate agents to sell property 1 which was empty and costing you money for council tax, utilities, mortgage payments ?
They have managed to sell in a difficult market after two years.
Yes it was very unprofessional to not make sure the property was secure after each viewing but how often did you check your property?
After exchange the buyers may have asked to have another viewing to measure up and the EA just gave them the keys or they had copies made.
The property was SOLD.
With property two the new build you have also sold the house and ONLY paid 1.5% to the estate agents many charge 2/3%
Move on with your life and next time sell any property you own yourself to save Estate agents costs. Easy

Aroundincircles

Ok, getting the general gist, time to move on!

Glad I dont live in Cheshire though - 2/3% definitely not the norm in this neck of the woods!

danielanthony

When we wanted the keys to the vacant house we were buying so we could decorate our solicitor said we needed a legal agreement with the vendors solicitor to allow this to happen, we couldn't just pop down and get the keys from the EA despite having exchanged contracts. But in you situation it's hard to see what you can now do, at the time they were trespassing but you wont get compensation for that now.

If you didn't sign a contract with the EA to sell house 2, then how can they charge a fee for selling it?

Aroundincircles

Danielanthony - thanks for your input. My understanding is that the EA should have sought permission for the Decorators to have Unaccompanied Access to carry out the work. We had agreed to accompanied access for the purpose of providing quotes but were never asked whether they could begin the work. As you say, it's proving difficult to get compensation for it now. Just seems weird to me that this sort of thing is allowed to go on without any kind of redress.

With house 2, the buyer supplied the EA's name as the agent and we accepted that. The payment was sent from the proceeds of sale direct from our solitor. Had we challenged it at the time i think they would have had difficulty making us pay as there was no contract, written or verbal. We accepted but were expecting to pay a lower fee (1.5% is their standard fee) based on the very limited work they'd carried out. That just seemed fair - silly really but we were also in the midst of agreeing sale of house 1 so would have been awkward to have played hard ball - and has never been our intention to try to get away with not paying them at all. Moral of the story - never expect an EA to play fair!

googler

Aroundincircles wrote: »

We accepted but were expecting to pay a lower fee (1.5% is their standard fee) based on the very limited work they'd carried out. That just seemed fair

But they're paid on the result (the sale), not on itemised work.

Why were you 'expecting' to pay a lower fee, when you hadn't agreed any lesser fee with the agency?